


The Kids Aren't Alright

by Marvels



Series: The Weight of Living [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, No Secondary Relationships Tagged, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, PTSD, Pack Feels, Romance, Sequel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-04-23 06:53:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4867280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marvels/pseuds/Marvels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia was supposed to be happy. She was finally dating Stiles, she had the support of her friends, and Beacon Hills was finally enjoying a period of undisturbed peace. But Lydia was still keeping Allison's final request a secret from the rest of the pack. She may have never told them about it at all, if Deputy Jordan Parrish hadn't come to the pack with the same cryptic message and a plea for help. Amongst the confusion, one thing became abundantly clear: Isaac Lahey was in trouble, and they needed to save him.</p><p>(Sequel to All the King's Horses)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Can You Stand the Person You've Become?

**Author's Note:**

> Oh yes. It's here. You're welcome. Let's talk at the end of this chapter, shall we?

Lydia stared across the mats with narrowed eyes. She was crouched in a defensive, uncharacteristically athletic stance. Malia waited upright on the opposite side of the sparring space, a cool smirk on her face. Despite her surprisingly apt teaching abilities, Lydia occasionally thought Malia enjoyed this a little more than she should.

Maybe she enjoyed it because she had never seen the prim and feminine banshee so physically active or so feral in her intensity. However, Lydia assumed that it was most likely attributable to the fact that she was bad at something that came very naturally to Malia. Lydia didn’t resent her that, despite the kick to her ego every time Malia pinned her down with one hand and minimal effort. To her credit, Malia was never overly rough with her, rarely leaving visible bruises or scratches. Lydia was especially thankful for that. She didn’t need prying questions, and Malia understood that.

But at that moment, Malia was her attacker, and she was supposed to do her best to defend herself and dodge the moves that the werecoyote pulled on her.

“Stay light on your feet,” Malia said sharply, nodding at Lydia’s stance. Lydia immediately rolled up onto the balls of her bare feet, bouncing slightly in that position. She heard a chuckle from the corner and tried not to let it break her concentration.

Unlike Malia, Derek refused to fight against Lydia when she was on the defensive. He’d offered himself up as a moving dummy for her to spar against when learning different kicks and punches. He even grudgingly agreed to sit in on their sparring practices to allegedly “coach” Lydia on what she was supposed to do in the moment. He just laughed at her just as much as he coached her.

Malia suddenly sprung across the mats, eyes glowing, fixated on Lydia. Having rehearsed the move a few times already, Lydia took no time at all to scramble to the ground on her right and pick up the twin staves that she often trained with. They were comfortably solid, smoothly finished wooden batons and, like the five foot long wooden staff she was also training with, they were designed to keep her enemy at a distance as much as any hand-to-hand combat weapon could. According to Derek, she might move up to graphite or metal staves when she was proficient enough, but that was more advanced martial arts than she was ready for. Despite that, the wooden staves had begun to feel more and more at home in her hands every time she used them.

As soon as she had a stave in each hand, she felt Malia bearing down on her with exaggerated speed. Lydia whipped her left arm up and out, clubbing Malia in the side with a strong backhand, stunning her momentarily. In the time she earned with that hit, Lydia scrambled back to her feet and was barely able to whack and deflect Malia’s incoming hit. Malia then swung her leg up to hit Lydia in the knee, but Lydia recognized the hit as it was coming in and pulled up her leg to cushion the blow with her shin.

This continued for approximately twenty more seconds. _Block right, slash left, block kick, cross-staves block, strike with knee, deflect jab, cross, sidestep uppercut..._

Seeing an opening, Lydia slashed her right baton in towards Malia’s ribs, but once again, she underestimated Malia’s speed and she staggered forward as the power of her swing continued to pull her forward along the same trajectory as Malia sidestepped the blow. _Shit_. She’d made this same mistake before and knew what came next. And what came next was extremely unpleasant.

Malia knocked the stave out of her right hand entirely, then delivered a hit to Lydia’s exposed side, and when the blow incapacitated Lydia, knocking the air out of her lungs, Malia swept her feet. Lydia dropped backwards and hit the mat with a heavy thud, knocking the wind out of her for the second time in roughly two seconds. Stars popped in her vision for a moment before the air rushed back into her lungs in a desperate gasp. When she caught her breath, Lydia thumped her head back onto the mat irritably before taking Malia’s outstretched hand to stand back up.

“Not terrible,” Malia intoned, smirking a little. Lydia rolled out her neck, reluctantly matching Malia’s grin.

“What did you do wrong?” Derek prompted from across the mats. She glared at him before turning back to the mat to pick up the baton that Malia had knocked away.

“I used my whole body on the hit instead of using just my arm.” She recited. “Got off balance.”

“Your stance was too narrow as well.” Derek pointed out. “The wider and more solidly planted  your feet are, the harder it is to knock you off balance. And Malia’s still pulling her punches.” His face drew into a slight scowl. “Significantly.”

“Okay,” Lydia muttered, using the bottom of her loose blue tank top to wipe the sweat off her face. “Got it. Let’s go again.”

“You can take a break, Lyds. You’re doing a lot better, even compared to last week,” Malia said. Her expression was open and honest, and Lydia couldn’t help but smile at that. Malia wasn’t one to conjure up compliments to help a bruised ego.

 _Escrima_ was a difficult form of martial art, Lydia had known that going into this. When they combined it with Muay Thai, it was all she could do to drag her aching body into bed each night. But she was getting better. That was all that mattered.

“You know,” Derek started carefully. “It might be a good idea to practice these techniques with another human first. That way you’re not at a huge speed and reaction time disadvantage.”

“I graduated that kickboxing class in four weeks, Der. I’m not going back to those studios.” Lydia's scowl was set and her demeanor was intentionally dense. He heaved a sigh.

“You could always ask-”

“ _No_.” Lydia’s voice was suddenly deeper, more dangerous. “The first thing you agreed to was that he doesn’t find out about any of this.” Derek and Malia exchanged looks as Lydia dropped her batons and grabbed her water bottle, taking a deep swig.

“Why don’t you want him to know?” Malia asked. If it was anyone else, Lydia would have been suspicious of that loaded question, but it was Malia. So she sighed and ran a hand through her sweaty, tangled ponytail.

“He just wouldn’t like the concept,” Lydia started delicately. “I mean, right now he thinks that everything’s fine, it’s always going to be fine from here on out. He’s usually less optimistic, more… paranoid. But he’s really, really happy right now. If he found out that I was training with you to fight werewolves and whatever else, he would not be happy. He’d think it was too dangerous.” Neither Malia nor Derek seemed wholly convinced.

“Doesn’t he deserve to know?” Malia hedged. Lydia scrubbed a hand over her face then shrugged.

“He does, I know he deserves to have all the information. But I can’t put him through stress like _that_ again." The implication of what _that_ was hung glaringly apparent in her voice. "He thinks he can protect me from it all. Me training like this… It would just tell him that I don’t have that faith in him.” She reached down and picked up the two wooden batons, spinning them in her hands with practiced ease. “Stiles can never find out. End of discussion. Let’s go again.” Sweat ran in rivers down the side of her face and she could feel her heart pounding in her chest. She knew that Malia and Derek could hear that pounding too, but instead of feeling violated and weak because of it, she felt irritated. Angry. Ready to beat this problem back with a pair of wooden sticks until it wasn’t a problem anymore.

“Lydia, we don’t mean to-”

“Let’s go again.”

* * *

Three months. It had been three months since Lydia’s time in Eichen House. Three months since she said goodbye to her best friend for the last time. Three months since she nearly lost her life in the process.

Three months since Lydia and Stiles started dating.

Stiles had never really believed that their relationship would actually cumulate into anything.

Then they had slowly, uncertainly, become friends. It took her over a year to start trusting him, maybe more. She’d broken his heart when she paired off with Jackson, then Aiden, two guys who couldn’t see past the pretty, vapid masks she wore. Then in turn, he’d broken her heart by dating Malia. Somewhere between his and her relationships, they had shared a kiss in a locker room.

Then it was never spoken of again. It wasn’t even acknowledged until Stiles had coaxed Lydia back from the brink of death. But then they kissed again, and suddenly, their first shared kiss carried more weight than either of them had previously allowed themselves to believe before.

And suddenly, she had become a nearly permanent fixture on his bed, in his kitchen, and at his side in the school hallways. She wore sweatshirts with his name and lacrosse number emblazoned on the back. Sometimes it still felt surreal to have this tiny little strawberry blonde leaning up against his shoulder for the world to see. It felt surreal that she wanted to be with him.

And as she clambered into the passenger seat of his Jeep for the last day of their junior year, wearing a pale purple dress and a perfume that smelled like lavender, he couldn’t help but grin. This was real. This was his life to love.

“Good morning,” he said brightly. She gave him a small, tired smile and leaned over to kiss his cheek in a wordless response. Her lips were soft and warm, and despite the fact that this kind of expression between them was common now, he still felt a slight blush flood his cheeks in a slow burn. He watched her with amusement as she stifled a yawn, buckling up her seatbelt before leaning back in her seat stiffly.

“That tired, huh?” He asked lightly, failing to suppress a grin. She turned her head to look up at him with tired eyes but a sharply raised eyebrow.

On the bone of her right cheek, a thin, silvery scar caught the light of the glaring morning sun. It was the one that was somehow left by Allison’s ring dagger. The scar was barely visible anymore due to Lydia’s meticulous cosmetic care, but it still caused his stomach to dive when he saw it catch the light, framing her tired face.

“When you have finals in two AP classes on the same day even after the AP exams, then you have a right to comment,” she said, her intended tone somewhat diluted by the yawn that parsed her sentence in half. Stiles laughed quietly, returning to the present and putting the Jeep in reverse, backing out of her driveway.

“Well I’ve got AP Chemistry with you today and I’m pretty sure you had all the course material memorized as of… Christmas? Halloween?” A smile broke out across her face and she glanced at him, pleased by the recognition.

“Thanksgiving.”

Stiles feigned irritation.

“See? I’m pretty sure that my one AP final plus Spanish is going to be harder,” he said competitively.

“Well that does happen when you marathon the original Star Wars trilogy the night before your finals,” Lydia said, nodding with mock sympathy.

“Scott hadn’t seen them yet!” Stiles said, his indignance genuine. “And we studied for Spanish a little too.”

“I guess the only time you two were able to make time for it was when procrastinating,” Lydia teased.

“ADHD is real, Lydia, and it is dangerous,” Stiles interjected. Lydia rolled her eyes.

“Don’t be so worried, Stiles, at least it’s not a cumulative final.”

“Um, cumulative would have been easier!” Stiles said, honestly. “All the easy material was in the first semester!”

“Oh come on, you’re still pulling an A- and that’s even with taking like two weeks off to deal with that whole...  _thing_...” Lydia finished her reassurances lamely. A short silence followed her comment. As pivotal as the incident had been to their relationship, they didn’t really talk about it all that much still. The memories were painful for both of them, and as far as Stiles knew, Lydia was content to just put all those bad memories behind her. But when it surfaced in conversation, as it inevitably did sometimes, the topic was immediately stifled, like laughter in a graveyard.

Stiles often wished they could just talk about it and get it out of the way. He wished that Lydia would confide in him when she woke in a cold sweat after falling asleep with him in his bed or on the couch, or that she would explain why she didn’t seem to sleep at all on the nights they were apart. She wasn’t ready to open up yet. He couldn’t help but wonder when she would be. If she ever would be.

“Do you know if we’re going to the loft for pack dinner tonight?” Stiles asked, reluctantly changing the subject. Palpable tension released from Lydia’s form, and she nodded.

“Last I heard, yeah. Derek’s going to order something… I honestly have no idea what,” Lydia confided. Stiles considered this as they rounded the corner and into the BHHS parking lot, grimacing.

“To be completely honest, I don’t know if I have faith in his ability to pick out good bad-for-you food,” Stiles said.

“It can’t be _that_ bad,” Lydia said with confidence. Stiles pulled into an open parking spot quickly, beating a dented up Corolla that was approaching from the other direction.

“Well, you have terrible taste in pizza, sandwiches, and ice cream, so I don’t know if I trust you either,” Stiles teased, sliding out of the driver’s seat. Lydia dropped out of the passenger seat with a look of genuine offense.

“I knew you hated my pizza taste, but what’s wrong with my sandwiches? Or my ice cream?” Lydia beseeched, a look of confused concern contorting her features. They started to walk towards the school and Stiles struggled to keep a straight face.

“Veggie sandwiches aren’t sandwiches. They’re salads with ambition,” Stiles began, garnering a snort of amusement from Lydia. “And rainbow sherbert is for children, you’re supposed to outgrow it after you’ve turned twelve.”

“I was also supposed to outgrow the height of 5’3” after I turned twelve but here I am,” Lydia answered tartly, turning up her nose. It was Stiles’s turn to laugh and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders good-naturedly, pulled her into his side as they walked. She maintained her act of annoyance for a few seconds longer before giving up and cracking into a smile.

“That’s my girl,” Stiles said quietly, giving her shoulders another squeeze before they separated, letting their hands brush as they walked into the school.

Stiles couldn’t help smiling. It was alright. They were all alright again. If this was a dream, he didn’t want to wake up.

* * *

Lydia asked Stiles to drop her at home after their finals that day. Typically, she would have gone back to his house with him, if he didn’t have lacrosse, and they would have done homework together, or put on some TV and fooled around or passed out. But she was tired and her head ached after the long, calculation-intensive finals, and it was only a half day anyways.

She hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before with her sparring session extending late into the night. Malia had ducked out eventually to study for her own exams, but Derek had let Lydia continue her practice for hours after that. He’s sent her home at one in the morning, insisting that four hours of training was far more than enough, and he wasn’t going to let her bomb her academic career. She’d snorted at the insinuation, but nearly fell asleep in the shower when she got home.

She’d finished both tests early, of course. In the first exam, AP Chemistry, she turned the test in at the front, then returned back to her desk, folded her arms on the desktop, and dropped her head to her arms, trying to squeeze in a thirty minute power nap.

She had been lucky that she’d had her first exam with Stiles, because she was fully asleep when the bell rang to release them from their classroom. He’d shaken her awake, much to her embarrassment, after the rest of their class had already filed out. The glimmer of concern in Stiles’s eyes was rattling, and it only reminded her of her experiences three months earlier. He guided her out of the room with a hand at the small of her back, a motion he only employed when he was worried or anxious about her condition or the overall safety of their situation. She resolved to not fall asleep so fully in the next class. She didn’t want to picture his degree of panic if he had to come wake her up at the end of an exam when he wasn’t even in the room.

So when she’d asked him to take her home, he nodded affirmatively.

“Take a nap,” he recommended, smiling slightly. “Junior year is over, you can treat yourself.” She humored his smile and returned one with an intentionally sheepish expression.

“I might be a genius, but sometimes even I am kept awake with test anxiety the night before.” That answer seemed to satisfy Stiles, at least on some level, and he nodded.

“I get it. I get nervous all the time, no matter how much I’ve studied.” He reached over to unfurl her hand, which she hadn’t even noticed was clenched in a fist. Despite the makeup she’d applied to her hands, there were still blue and purple undertones on the knuckles of her pointer and middle finger. He didn’t let go until they pulled into her driveway, at which point he turned to her, glancing between her face and her hand.

“Wanna tell me what happened here?” He asked, brushing his thumb over the shadowy ridges of her knuckles, looking at her pointedly.

“It’s that aerobics class,” Lydia lied easily. “We did some punching exercises on punching bags, but they didn’t give us gloves. I think I punched too hard.” She let a tone of genuine pride creep into her voice. She’d made Derek’s nose bleed for a brief minute with a combination punch the night before. After he healed, he’d irritably taken the pain from her hands, grunting that she was already punching much harder than he’d expected.

“Well get some sleep, Rocky,” Stiles joked. “You better be bright and chipper when I come back to get you for the pack dinner.” He kissed the knuckles of her right hand, while never breaking eye contact. Lydia smiled at his kindness, while also feeling a twinge of guilt in her chest. It hurt to lie to him every time. But she was so sure that he’d be more hurt by the truth.

“I will. You convince Derek to get good bad-for-you-food, whatever that is,” Lydia answered. She started to lean down and grab her purse when she changed her mind and leaned back to cup Stiles’s face and pull him into a kiss.

The sensation never failed to flood her system with warmth, and she could feel Stiles’s lips curling into a smile against hers. When she pulled away he was smiling like an idiot, toothy and messy haired. She committed the expression to memory, despite the fact that she’d seen that face a hundred times before. His expression was sheer happiness. That was the boy she needed to protect from everything that was soon to descend on their pack.

“Call me if you haven’t heard from me by six, I might still be asleep,” Lydia said quietly.

“Got it,” Stiles said, turning his attention back to his dash, smile lingering on his face. She pressed another kiss to his cheek, then grabbed her purse.

“Call me,” she repeated, smirking at him.

“Get out of my car, Martin,” he said with a grin. She smiled and slid out the passenger side, waving to him when the front door opened up beneath her key. At her signal, he waved back and then began his route home.

When the door shut behind her, Lydia let out an unrestrained sigh. She dropped her purse, keeping her phone in hand, and tripped up the stairs to her room. She was exhausted, sore, and just needed a couple of hours of uninterrupted sleep. But in spite of herself, Lydia’s first move in her room was towards her desk. She pulled out her strongbox, opening it and staring at what lied within.

Allison’s Chinese ring dagger.

It was compulsive habit by now. She couldn’t help herself. She had looked at it every day for the ninety seven days it had been in her possession. As each day dragged on, she grew more and more wary of it. She had been talking to Isaac regularly since she severed her tether to Allison. He seemed fine. He seemed like he was having a blast, actually. He wasn’t going to high school in France, and the French Argents were nothing but kind to him. Lydia wondered if Allison had been wrong, or if this was just the calm before the storm.

Finding herself even more weary than before, she closed the strongbox and put it back away. Fumbling around in her closet, she slid out of her dress and bra, leaving on her pale pink underwear and slipping one of Stiles’s lacrosse hoodies over her head. Inhaling deeply, she realized that it had begun to smell more like her than like Stiles. She made a mental note to trade it out with a different sweatshirt when she was at his house next. She swiped off her makeup with a couple of wipes, pulled her hair up into a sloppy bun, and crawled into bed slowly, her hands and back and knees aching.

As she slid under the covers, the morse vibration code alerted her to Stiles’s incoming text. She flung an arm across her bed to reach the phone, and squinted at it.

_Dad’s making me help file reports at the station this afternoon, ill probably want to escape way before 6 but don’t wake up on my account :)_

Shaking her head and smiling wearily, Lydia punched in a quick reply, locked her phone and scooted over to one side of her queen-sized bed, making sure to leave a Stiles-sized space on the bed beside her.

* * *

So, Stiles was lying. He felt bad about it too. He didn’t know why he felt the need to hide information from Lydia, she made him so fucking happy, it killed him. But he also knew how she’d react if she knew what he was doing. His dad hadn’t requested his help. In fact, it was Stiles who was getting the help from the sheriff.

“Nice and easy, son. Just focus on your breathing and the target beyond the sight marker,” the sheriff coached. Stiles breathed deeply, and then on an exhale, he pulled the trigger.

Six shots went off in total before Stiles brought the firearm back down to the table of his booth at the shooting range. His dad hit the call button for the target paper, and it was wheeled out to them on an automated pulley system. The bullet holes all landed within the rough outline of the human upper body target shape. Most of the bullets had hit the outer edge of the body shape, around the shoulders and arms. It was where Stiles had been aiming, so he was fairly pleased with his progress.

His father inclined his head as an acknowledgement of Stiles’s progress.

“I don’t know Stiles, I think you’re ready to apply for a permit to carry, if you want to. You’ve got the maintenance, safety features and shooting ability down,” the sheriff said, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe the words coming out of his own mouth. Stiles grinned.

“Don’t say it like that, it’s almost as if you don’t trust me handling this stuff,” he joked. “But in all seriousness, I don’t think I want one right now.”

“Uh huh, and why’s that?”

“I don’t wanna have one just… around,” Stiles said uncomfortably. “I just like being able to use one when I want to. I like having the skill,” he clarified. His father nodded with approval.

“Mature decision, Stiles. I like where your head’s at, and I’m proud of you for that,” He clapped Stiles on the shoulder.

“Thanks, Dad,” Stiles said, letting the pride fill his chest. He cleaned up and disarmed the equipment in front of him easily. He felt his father’s eyes on his back, so when he was done, he removed his protective glasses and looked back at his dad expectantly.

“Are you ever going to tell me why you’re hiding this from Lydia?” The sheriff asked. Stiles shook his head.

“Not right now, Dad,” he said plainly. “You better go upstairs and shower in the locker room, Melissa’s going to be there to meet you in like… fifteen minutes.” The deflection was obvious, but it was true. Sheriff Stilinski checked his watch and nodded hurriedly.

“Right, okay. We’re having a talk about this later, Stiles.”

“Whatever you say, Dad.”

Once his dad was out of eyeshot, Stiles started gathering his things, checking the time on his phone. It was only 4:45. He smiled at that. Enough time to stop home, wash the smell of gunpowder off his body, and still catch a quick nap at Lydia’s house.

The first two tasks went remarkably fast, given his eagerness to return to Lydia. But just as he was walking out the door, he remembered her last text to him and ran back up to his room.

_Sounds good, I’ll leave you a little bit of room on the bed. Maybe. Also bring a new sweatshirt, the black one I have doesn’t smell like you anymore x_

Who was he to deny his girlfriend a new sweatshirt? Especially if in return he was getting one back that smelled like her?

The car ride over was fairly quick, despite a brief incident with a too-bold squirrel who refused to get out of the Jeep’s way until the very last second. As he rolled up to her house, the sunlight was just starting to fade into twilight, though he knew that the light wouldn’t leave the sky for another few hours. He lifted the flowerpot next to the front door to grab her spare key, throwing it back into its hiding place once the door unlocked in front of him.

The house was totally silent, and Stiles snorted softly at the sight of Lydia’s purse and shoes piled haphazardly in the front hall. He contemplated bringing them upstairs, but decided against it, kicking his shoes off to sit beside hers.

He cracked the door of her bedroom open, smiling at the sight of strawberry blonde hair flowing over the hood and chest of his sweatshirt, the Becaon Hills High School Lacrosse logo staring back at him. She was curled up asleep on her side facing the door, and there was a glaringly obvious space left open on the bed in front of her. Stiles threw the new sweatshirt onto the foot of the bed and then climbed up onto the bed beside her, getting close enough that he could feel her breath, steady and even. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and the exhaustion on her face looked less pronounced in her sleep.

He laid down facing her. He pulled the covers up to mid chest and drew his knees up to knock gently against hers, and slid his fingers through the spaces between hers. He then kissed her forehead softly before laying his head down on the pillow to face her.

Lydia inhaled deeply at the feeling of his kissed, stirring slightly. She seemed to absorb his presence through barely open eyes, a lazy smile crossing her sleep-warm face. She looked back at him with that same dazed, sleepy smile.

“You get some good work done at the station?” She asked, her voice a cracked whisper.

“Yeah, Dad let me out earlier than I thought he would. He and Melissa have a date,” he whispered back, the lie coming easily. Lydia beamed at the news regardless. The pack was overwhelmingly supportive of Melissa and the sheriff dating. “Have you been asleep this whole time?”

“Mhmm. What time is it?” She asked, growing a little more awake by the minute.

“Like… 5:15?” Stiles replied with an air of nonchalance.

“Five hours… I guess I was really tired,” Lydia said, matching his tone. “Do we have to leave for the pack meeting yet?” She propped herself up on her elbow, untangling one of her hands to rub her eyes. The knuckles of her hand were bruised in a deeper color than before, but Stiles didn’t mention it.

“Nah, you can sleep for like fifteen more minutes, half an hour maybe,” he reassured her. She looked extremely pleased with this information.

“Mmm, good,” she groaned. She then flipped over onto her other side, pulling Stiles’s arm up over her side to wrap around her as she turned. He smiled at this nonverbal invitation, and pulled her closer into his chest firmly, holding her tight as she sighed contentedly. He used his free arm to set an alarm on his phone for 5:45 before tucking his arm underneath her neck.

Her breathing fell into a steady, slow rhythm within the minute, and Stiles buried his head into the back of her neck as he wrapped himself around her. _His_.

He was still smiling when he succumbed to the pull of sleep.

* * *

Scott checked the clock on his phone and sighed with patient, suppressed irritation. Ever since Stiles and Lydia had started dating, they had started showing up late to pack dinners and meetings. Lydia was always apologetic. Stiles was always wearing some shit-eating grin.

They didn’t bother waiting for them to start eating the Chinese takeout that Derek had chosen for the night. Kira and Malia were laughing at something on Kira’s phone on the couch and Derek was arguing the advantages and disadvantages of Scott creating a Beta wolf when Stiles and Lydia rolled in, twenty minutes late.

“You’re late,” Malia announced as a greeting.

“I overslept my post-finals nap alarm,” Lydia explained. “My bad.”

“There’s only one egg roll left, you guys can fight to the death for it,” Derek proposed, pointing to one of the containers. Scott promptly grabbed it, taking a bite and shaking his head at the latecomers.

“No egg rolls when you’re late,” he said with exaggerated sternness. Stiles looked aghast at this show of dominance.

“Way to go, Lydia, now I missed the egg rolls,” Stiles whined. Lydia looked ready to say something in response, but instead flushed pink and shrugged.

“Have literally anything else,” she offered, unapologetically. Stiles huffed before grabbing the carton of sesame beef. Lydia took a container of fried rice and sat down between Scott and Malia on the couch while Stiles took the open seat on the other side of Kira.

“So, who failed a final today?” Kira asked conversationally. Malia, Scott, and Stiles raised their hands in unison. They then glanced over at Lydia who was looking between them all with raised eyebrows.

“Am I supposed to be commiserating right now?” She asked loftily.

“Just try imagining what it would be like to be one of us poor, poor, people of average intelligence for just like one second,” Stiles said sarcastically.

“Oh stop, all of you are far above average intelligence,” Lydia said dismissively.

“Ahem.” Malia cleared her throat  and gestured to herself with self-deprecating humor, but a look in her eyes that revealed real insecurity. Lydia shook her head while stirring up her carton of rice.

“Educational achievement really isn’t a reflection of intelligence,” Lydia asserted, speaking into her rice. ”I mean, look at Derek. He got a law degree and everything.” Derek looked mildly offended, but even more amused. Malia seemed to find the quip especially funny.

“But actually, way to go everyone,” Scott started, steering them back on track. “I’m sure everyone pulled good grades for the semester, and especially with the hectic semester we’ve had, I’m really proud of all of us.” The pack collectively nodded and murmured in agreement,

“So what’s on tap for the summer?” Derek asked, his question directed most specifically at Scott. The alpha shrugged and looked around.

“I mean, I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we’re not going to go out looking for trouble. It seems to find us whether or not we’re planning on it,” Scott said, looking between his pack members, their past struggles and pain causing him empathetic sadness. “But I think until then, we should just try to take advantage of the time we’ve been given, really take care of ourselves and each other. We’re really lucky-”

Scott was cut off by a knock on the door. He saw the members of his pack all looking between each other, doing a mental headcount. They were all accounted for. As each of the members took note of that, their heads swiveled to look at Derek. He returned their interrogative looks with similar confusion.

“Don’t look at me,” he said, voice just above a whisper. “I’m not expecting anyone.” As if on cue, all the heads turned to look towards Scott. He glanced between each of their faces. They didn’t know what to do, and they expected him to know. He steeled himself and rose to his feet.

“I’ll get it,” he said quietly. He could sense the heightened anxiety in the five people sitting behind him, but he tried to shake those senses and absorb the information that the stranger at the door was transmitting.

It was a man. Nervous, but not necessarily scared. His scent was vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t remember where he had smelled it before. Slowly, he reached out to slide the door open. A young man in jeans and a t-shirt stood in the doorway. He looked as familiar as he had smelled, but once again, Scott couldn’t remember where he’d seen him before. Then Stiles spoke up.

“Deputy Parrish? What.... what are you doing here?” Stiles asked, confusion replacing any of the anxiety he had been exuding. Scott remembered him immediately at Stiles’s recognition. He’d been the cop to address the bomb threat from back when Stiles was possessed by the nogitsune. The young deputy looked almost as confused as Scott felt, and significantly more nervous. He wetted his lips before starting.

“I’m… I was told that I could find your group… your pack here,” Parrish said nervously. Scott could feel Derek’s defensive instincts kicking in, but tried to ignore it.

“Who told you about us? Why did you need to find us?” Scott asked briskly, brushing over the fact that the deputy had called them a “pack.” Parrish nodded quickly, wide eyed, and apparently surprised by his ability to gain an audience with them at all.

“I’m here, I mean, I was sent here to find the person who… bit Isaac Lahey,” Parrish said carefully. Scott felt the rush of air behind him, and suddenly, Derek was at his side. Back on the couch, Scott could hear the sudden spike of one of his packmates’ heartbeat. Something was off.

“Well, you’ve found him,” Derek said, venom seething from every word. “What do you want?” Parrish looked properly intimidated by Derek and continued his nervous nodding.

“I have reason to believe that Isaac is in trouble. He’s in danger, and I was told to come find you, that you would be willing to help him,” Parrish said quickly. Scott was immediately filled with his own sense of dread. But simultaneously, he smelled a sudden lurch of panic pheromones release from behind him the moment that Parrish mentioned danger. He turned around to pinpoint who the sensation came from, but he didn’t even need to follow the scent of the fear once he was facing the couch. Lydia had gone white as a sheet, staring at Parrish with undiluted horror. All the rest of the pack was facing her too. Fear and concern was one thing. Panic was another.

“Why should we believe you?” Derek asked, ever the defensive one. Scott was sure that Derek could sense Lydia’s panic too, but he was more intent on protecting them all from the immediate threat first.

“I don’t know how to convince you, I can’t say how I know, but I just do,” Parrish said, his voice dripping with desperation.

“Your word alone isn’t good enough, deputy,” Derek growled. Scott stepped towards Derek, prepared to make him stand down, but the tension between them was replaced with confusion when a sharp, shaky breath came from behind them.

“He’s telling the truth,” Lydia squeaked. “He’s right. Isaac is in danger. And we have to help him.”


	2. You Make Me Want to Scream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the pack realizes that Isaac is truly in danger, they stand divided on the decisions regarding who should save him and how.

The silence that followed Lydia’s words was deafening. She could hear her pulse pounding in her ears, could feel her chest tightening, could feel all of their eyes boring holes right through her. The weight that had been slowly crushing her for the last three months was suddenly crumbling around her. Despite that, it didn’t feel any less suffocating.

“What?” Stiles was the one who spoke up first. Of course Stiles was the first to speak up. And his voice, oh god, his voice. It was so quiet, Lydia couldn’t figure out whether it was full of anger, confusion, or hurt. Lydia didn’t look at him, but kept her eyes glued on Scott. It was a little easier to look at him, because at this point, he only looked confused.

“Isaac is in trouble. Parrish is telling the truth. I… I don’t know how he knows, though,” Lydia said, fighting to keep her voice steady. Her it felt as if her heart had jumped up to her throat, while all the blood drained from her face. Parrish looked a little reassured, but more confused than anything.

“Who told you?” Parrish asked. Lydia took the question as a challenge, knowing that she would much rather jump to anger than stay in a place of guilt and fear. She crossed her arms over her chest.

“Who told _you_?” Lydia echoed indignantly. Parrish gave a small, huffy laugh.

“Not the same person, I think,” Parrish tested. It was Lydia’s turn to laugh this time, startling her packmates. They hadn’t expected such a rapid cycling of emotional hormones. Lydia was glad to have caught them off guard. The assholes should keep their wolfy noses to themselves.

“No, I’m entirely sure it wasn’t the same person,” Lydia said, smiling, but narrowing her eyes.

“Then who told you?” Parrish pried. Lydia rose from her seat on the couch and walked up towards Parrish. She tried to ignore the eyes that followed her all the way up, but kept her arms crossed defensively across her chest.

In desperate need of information, she cleared her head of the worries about her packmates behind her, and instead focused on scrutinizing Parrish. He seemed almost relieved by her knowledge of the issue, but still on edge. Conflicted. Too scared to be relieved. So his anonymous  informant was likely a powerful person. Maybe the person held power exclusively over Parrish, and that was why he was interested in finding Isaac. It could be money or blackmail or punishment. Parrish was a cop, he was young, he seemed to be a straight arrow, so blackmail or threat was more likely than compensation. Threats made people desperate, and desperate people did stupid things.

Conclusion: She couldn’t trust him.

“You’re not entitled to that information. Neither is the person who’s pulling your strings,” Lydia said coolly, coming face to face with him, Derek and Scott standing on her either side, both looking confused, but clearly staying on Lydia’s side. Parrish looked surprised, but immediately fell into a defensive stance.

“Then don’t expect to get anything out of me,” he said stiffly.

“I thought you said that you needed our help,” Scott answered before Lydia got the chance. He was a smart guy, she had always known that. His responsibilities as alpha came at a detriment to his schoolwork, but he was quick thinking. Parrish seemed irritated by his question.

“I thought you guys cared about him enough to help,” the deputy shot back. Scott sighed heavily, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“Can you like… Just wait outside for a minute?” Scott asked irritably. Parrish shrugged, a flicker of a smile crossing his face as he realized he may have gained some traction. He stepped back out through the sliding barn door of the loft, and Derek shut it behind him a little more forcefully than was probably necessary.

Derek then turned to Lydia with an expression that could only be described as fury. In one swift movement, he looped an arm around her waist and pulled her over to the couch with supernatural speed. Scott followed, and Lydia found herself standing, facing the semicircle of people she had needed the most in the past few months. They were the ones she had leaned on for support and help and love and now they knew she had been lying. Poor repayment for their help.

“Explain,” Derek said, his voice skirting around a growl. Lydia took a deep breath, mentally kicking herself when she realized how shaky she must have sounded.

“Allison… she warned me that something might happen… To Isaac,” she said quietly, twisting the truth a little. Kira, Scott and Stiles flinched noticeably at the name, but Malia and Derek remained straightfaced. “Back when she was in my head.”

“What exactly did she say?” Derek asked sharply.

“She said that she had seen him? Like, I don’t know how, in some psychic way? She was a disembodied consciousness bound to me, but she could kind of be present in other places too. With other people,” Lydia struggled with the answer. Derek huffed slightly, crossing his arms in an indication that he was done with the conversation for the moment. Lydia understood his anger. He and Malia had been helping her more than the others knew. Training her. She had trusted them with that secret, but not this one.

“Why couldn’t you tell us?” Malia said, surprisingly quiet and controlled. “Didn’t we deserve to know?” Lydia immediately recognized the words as echoes from their conversation last night, when she refused to share information about training with Stiles.

“It’s not about what you deserved, it was about protecting you from the next big, dark problem headed our way,” Lydia said tersely. Malia held her gaze for a solid moment, her eyes conveying everything from sympathy to anger, and Lydia tried her best to meet that look with nonverbal apology.

“Were you ever going to tell us?” Scott asked roughly. She looked back at him slowly, drawing in a deep breath.

“I’ve been handling it on my own. If it escalated, like it did today, I was going to tell you,” Lydia said, feeling a hint of desperation creep into her voice. _She was protecting them. She owed them that much. They had to understand._

“Yeah, because we all know how well it went the last time you closed yourself off like this,” Stiles said jarringly, his voice jaded and on edge. Lydia finally turned to meet his eyes. All she could see in the moment was frustration. Anger. She exhaled shortly through her nose.

“If we can all remember correctly, it wasn’t just me pulling away last time,” she shot back. “This is different anyways.” Stiles looked up at her, his eyes twitching, suddenly vindictive.

“Stop being so fucking petty, Lydia, I seriously can’t believe you right now.” The words spewed out of his mouth, acidic and sharp.

“I’m not being petty, you’re being dramatic!” Lydia said, her voice getting louder.

“Dramatic? Is that a joke?” Stiles laughed without humor before letting his face drop into an expression more dangerous than she had ever seen him wear. “Allison almost killed you and you’re keeping fucking secrets about all the gory details. God, like you don’t even talk about it at all! Do you know how hard it is to skirt around that kind of topic all the time? And then find out that you’re still involved in that shit? You’re fucking insane!” He yelled. The rest of the pack looked incredibly uncomfortable, but neither Lydia nor Stiles were paying them any attention at that point.

“Do you think I avoid talking about it because I’m trying to forget about it? Jesus, Stiles, how do you not _get it?_ ” Lydia shouted back. “I’m doing it for your own good, for everyone’s benefit, I didn’t want to put this on all of you again!”

“Why the fuck not? Why couldn’t you stop acting like a fucking martyr and actually handle this like you’re not twelve?” Stiles demanded. Derek, Malia, Scott and Kira were slowly slinking away from the couch, but Lydia didn’t notice. She just felt the flush of anger rising in her face, her hands coiling into fists.

“Because I don’t want to need you!” Lydia shrieked. “I hate feeling like I need everyone else, I want to be able to handle this shit on my own instead of putting it on the shoulders of the people who did fucking everything for me for nearly a month this year! I want to be able to do this on my own! I want to have this life where everything fits back into place again, where I can love people but not need them to protect me and rescue me all the time!”

She might as well have slapped Stiles across the face. His eyes were wide, his face pale and his mouth slightly agape. The rest of the pack was staring at them from a healthy distance with the same expression of disbelief.

“Tell us how you really feel,” Stiles finally said. His voice was bitter and his face sunk into a stony expression. Lydia knew it could only be concealing deep hurt.

“Stiles, you know I don’t mean it like that. I still care about you, this isn’t a statement about how I feel about you-”

“I think I do know how you mean it,” Stiles said curtly. Lydia felt a sudden fracture somewhere within her ribcage, but restrained the urge to bring both hands to her chest. It would look either weak or mocking, and she didn’t want to appear to be either.

“Stiles-”

“We can talk about it later,” Stiles cut her off roughly.

She stared at him blankly, the pain radiating so clearly from his body matching the pain that thrummed through her chest. When she looked back over at the pack, they met her gaze unabashedly with matching expressions of disbelief.

“Anyone else want to bitch at me about this, or am I free to go?” Lydia sneered. Scott walked back over to her wordlessly and with all the sternness and authority of a father, he grabbed her by the elbow, dragging her over to the kitchen where they could speak in relative privacy. When he turned to face her, she yanked her elbow out of his grasp, and he let her.

“Lydia, calm down,” he said firmly.

“Are you going to lecture me?” Lydia accused. He shook his head slowly, deliberately.

“I understand why,” he said. She blanched at his words.

“What?”

“I get it. You feel like you’re putting too much of your struggles on us, and you want to feel like you’re capable of handling more,” Scott said concisely. “You feel guilty for making your problems someone else’s problems.”

“Yeah. That’s… that’s it,” She said, her shoulders sagging in relief. Someone understood.

“I appreciate that effort, and the selflessness that went into it,” Scott started, nodding encouragingly at her when she looked up at him. “After Allison died, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to channel my grief, I felt weak and I didn’t know who to turn to because my problems were crushing me, and I couldn’t imagine making someone else share that weight.” His words rang with truth, and Lydia nodded, her mouth suddenly dry. He understood. He always understood.

“I know that feeling,” she whispered.

“I still feel that way sometimes, about the whole pack. I feel like I need to be here to protect you all, to take care of you. Because like we said, we’re in trouble more often than we are at peace,” Scott said, suddenly quieter, more insecure.

“You want to hide away any of your own troubles instead of adding to the pile of what the pack needs to deal with,” Lydia continued. He nodded, a flicker of a smile on his face.

“When we first became friends, I wouldn’t have believed that you could have ever understood that, let alone empathized,” He admitted. Lydia felt her own expression lighten a little.

“When we first became friends, I wouldn’t have understood. And I wasn’t really a big fan of empathy,” she replied lightly. “But now I get it. So I think that means that I have to go talk to Parrish.” Her body tensed up at the prospect of such an endeavor. Scott placed a hand on Lydia’s arm, halting her departure.

“Let me help you,” he asked, his eyes suddenly warm and sad.

“Your wolf puppy side is showing,” Lydia sniffed, smiling. “But sure. You can come. Under one condition.” Scott wrinkled his nose at the stipulation.

“What?”

“You start sharing with me too,” She said seriously. “We don’t have to put this stuff on everyone. But together, I think we’re strong enough to do it together. We can protect them.” She let herself look over her shoulder at where Stiles stood, stiff and haughty. She glanced over to Scott and saw him looking at Kira.

“We can protect them,” he echoed. Then he looked back at her, and he nodded. It was clear what they both had to do.

* * *

 

Stiles was using every ounce of willpower and mental energy to stay still and silent. He was dying to fidget. It was almost physically painful to restrain the bouncing of his knees and the impatient snapping of his fingers and cracking knuckles. But even more painful was the cost of silence.

He felt like he was going to explode if he didn’t get the chance to speak to Lydia alone. Now.

Scott had dragged her over to the kitchen, a feat that likely required all of his supernatural, wolfy power, what with the way Lydia had been digging her heels into the ground. They were standing there talking, and Stiles could literally see the tension and defensiveness slowly releasing its hold on her shoulders.

For some reason, that infuriated him. She should be fighting mad, defensive and clawing for her position when they got their chance alone. The last thing he wanted was for her to be calm and condescending. He could deal with Lydia when she was mad, but he couldn’t stand her when she was patronizing.

Then she looked over at him with those big hazel-green eyes, and he could have sworn that look was the same he’d seen constantly in the days following the severance of Allison’s tether. She looked loving, she looked worried, but more than anything, she looked like she had a sense of purpose. Scott followed her eyes, then looked over at where Kira was chatting uncomfortably with Malia and Derek. Lydia’s eyes flicked back up to Scott’s face, over to Kira’s, then back to Stiles’s.

He held her gaze with cold indifference. Scott murmured something to her, and she gave a sad smile. It was as if all the weight had once again been loaded up onto her back, but she shouldered with grace. Stiles wished she wouldn’t.

Scott approached the group again while Lydia went to open up the front door to the loft. Both looked full of purpose again. When Lydia led Parrish back in, he looked incredibly confused, but relieved all the same.

“We’re willing to help you,” Scott announced. Lydia’s lips pressed into a firmer, more forced smile at this, but nodded in consensus. Parrish looked relieved.

“That’s great. Will you tell me where he is?” He asked earnestly. Derek snorted derisively at him. Stiles noted that they were of a very similar age, despite Derek’s obvious dominance. But then again, Stiles had noticed that at the station too. Parrish was young and bright but due to his military background, he was very hierarchical in his thinking. Unfortunately enough, Parrish always seemed to peg himself at the bottom of the totem pole. It didn’t seem right to Stiles. His dad was always talking about how smart the guy was.

“Last we heard, Isaac wasn’t even on the continent anymore,” Derek informed the deputy. Parrish was not rattled the way Stiles expected him to be. Instead, he bobbed his head.

“Great. Where is he?” To Derek’s obvious irritation, the questions were directed back towards Lydia.

“France,” Lydia said, her tone making it clear that there was more to it than that. Parrish picked up on it just as well as Stiles had.

“Well that narrows it down a bit,” Parrish said. He was establishing very clearly that this was him exercising great patience. “Where in France?”

“Who told you to find him?” Lydia countered. She was crisp and cold. Business-like all of a sudden. She was using the tone she took with teachers who insisted she was wrong when she knew very well that she was correct. Stiles would have been more amused by it if they weren’t currently in the middle of a monumental argument. Parrish looked exhausted by the U-turn their conversation had taken.

“Really? I already told you that I can’t disclose that,” Parrish said. Lydia huffed and folded her arms over her chest.

“I can’t explain everything until I know I can trust you. You can’t keep withholding information from me,” Lydia said firmly. Stiles couldn’t restrain the audible snort that escaped him. All the eyes in the room swiveled to face him. Lydia looked shocked, frozen in place, her eyes glued to his. He saw panic. Guilt. He didn’t care at the moment.

“Don’t you think that’s a _little_ hypocritical?” He asked. He could feel the vitriol slipping out from between his teeth before he realized what he was doing. Lydia steeled herself, allowing her expression to drop into passivity. Beside her, Scott winced visibly. Stiles made a mental note to shake him down for answers later. Scott shouldn’t have been sympathizing, and yet there he was.

Kira, the only one who had stayed silent on the issue up until this point, was staring at Scott, her electricity practically crackling in her eyes. She was curious too. And she looked supportive of Stiles’s words rather than Lydia and Scott’s sentiments. Lydia seemed to have shaken off whatever shrapnel of Stiles’s words had hit her, and she was focused on Parrish again, a dangerously soft smile on her face.

“Stiles is right,” She said. Her tone froze Stiles from the inside out. It was vindictive, cold, and ruthless. “You need all the information to go and retrieve Isaac. I’ll gladly tell you the details.” The methodical, calculating look in her eyes set Stiles on edge.

She’d been mentally dissecting Parrish since he walked through the front door of the loft, and she’d been planning her next move since he first let an accusation fly. She wasn’t purposely admitting that Stiles was right in order to extend an olive branch to him or Parrish. This wasn’t an accommodation or an apology. It was an ambush.

“Great,” Parrish breathed, looking more relaxed than he had all evening. “Tell me everything.” Lydia narrowed her eyes, smiling. _Uh-oh_.

“Not yet.” She said sweetly. The undercurrent of steel and ice and hardness was still present, but better hidden under a saccharine smile. Parrish’s expression crumbled in disbelief.

“Seriously?” He moaned. “When?” Lydia looked over to Scott, who nodded, then returned her gaze to Parrish.

“When you, Scott, and I land in Paris,” she said gently. Her smile was victorious, and though she didn’t look over at Stiles, it was clear that this assertion wasn’t just directed at Parrish. She’d taken out the queen and landed in checkmate in one swift move. Parrish was rendered momentarily speechless, stuttering inaudibly. Derek, Malia and Kira, who must have had some inkling of what was going to happen, all burst into protest, clamoring at Scott, asking him to explain. Stiles just stared at Lydia, unsure of what he felt the most, because he was pretty sure that he was feeling almost everything to some degree in that moment.

_What are you doing?_

_You’re so stupid, this isn’t safe, you’re not proving anything to anyone by getting yourself hurt or killed._

_Why are you being so secretive?_

_I thought we shared everything. Well, I thought you shared everything, I had my secrets but they were small and I had my reasons, I needed to protect you. I’d never given you a reason not to trust me, not really._

_Why couldn’t you trust me?_

_Did you ever trust me?_

_Was this ever real?_

The thoughts were painful to entertain, and when he looked up at Lydia, intending to face her with the same spite she had just shown him, he was too weak for such hate. He knew that all he could express in this moment was pain. What truly surprised him though, was the nearly identical expression on Lydia’s face. With the noise and distraction around them, she just looked at him, hurt and guilty and apologetic, and it was as if she was asking him _why? Why had he forced her hand? She hadn’t wanted to pull this move, but because of him, she had to. It was almost as if she had done it for him._ But that was wrong, all wrong.

“I made Isaac, if anyone’s going, it’s me,” Derek barked from somewhere in the din that filled the living room. “I’m the one who turned Isaac, and Parrish asked for me when he got here.” He was standing next to Lydia, and so she flinched at his demand, breaking eye contact with Stiles as she was drawn back into the conversation.

“What makes you think that I can take any of you to France with me?” Parrish cut in, eyes wide and indignant. There was a slight catch in his voice though. It was almost as if his words sounded rehearsed. Stiles was still milling through what the possible explanations behind that could be when Lydia interjected.

“The person who is forcing you into this is powerful. They can make it happen. They probably expected it, actually.” She told him sternly. “That person probably knows where Isaac is, and refuses to tell you where because you going there by yourself would be disastrous. You need us to convince Isaac to come back because we don’t have the time for you to screw this up. And you need us because the impending threat is not human, which you clearly know because you weren’t confused when Derek said that he ‘made’ Isaac. So how many tickets can your benefactor provide?”

The room was dead silent again for a moment as each member of the pack individually tried to piece together how Lydia had reached that conclusion. Parrish answered before anyone had the chance to ask.

“You’re right,” he admitted, narrowing his eyes at her suspiciously. “At least on the important information.” _Of course she was right,_ Stiles thought irritably. _She was always right. It was just one of her features that became incredibly annoying when she was arguing._

“How many tickets?” She prompted.

“Three. Including mine,” he answered firmly.

“Me, you, Scott. Done,” Lydia said curtly. Derek began to argue with her while she and Scott defended the decision. The realization began to dawn on Stiles. She wasn’t just running away and taking these problems on by herself. She was running into danger. And she wasn’t letting him come with her. Fury washed over him anew and all he could do was laugh. The arguing in front of him stuttered to a halt, and heads slowly turned to face him. Lydia’s confidence clearly wavered as she looked down the steps at him. She took a step in his direction.

“What are-”

“Alright, fuck this,” Stiles snapped, making her flinch and stop in her tracks, wide eyes fixated on his face. “I’m out of here. Lydia, if you want to talk about this, you know where to find me. Otherwise, have fun in France, try not to die over there.” Stiles said, his tone mocking as he grabbed his keys off of the coffee table. He couldn’t meet Lydia’s eye anymore, but the look on Scott’s face was devastating, and Stiles’s heart sunk. It had come out so fast. Feeling everyone’s eyes on him, Stiles found himself storming out of the loft.

He took the stairs and froze momentarily on the next floor down, looking over to the right and seeing the door to the apartment they had used months ago. When he had given all of himself to keep Lydia safe.

_And now she’s gambling with her life again, like all of that was nothing._

He continued on his descent, passing each of the next floors silently and without pause. As he pushed open the front door of the building, he felt the vibration of his phone in his pocket. It only buzzed twice, indicating a text, and Stiles didn’t look at it right away. Instead, he waited until he was in the Jeep, sitting numbly in the driver’s seat. He brought himself to look at the name on his screen, and felt a strange wave of relief when it came from Scott, rather than Lydia.

_buddy that was really not cool. I know ur mad but lets talk about this tonight or tomorrow I hate to see u guys fighting._

Always the diplomat, always the peacemaker. Stiles forces himself to take a deep, calming breath. He resolved to text Scott when he got home, once he had a chance to clear his head.

He put the Jeep into gear and pulled out of the parking lot, windows rolled down in the summer heat as he tried to wash away the lingering scent of her perfume with the wind.

* * *

Scott stared at the door as it clattered shut behind Stiles. He could smell his best friend’s guilt, his pain, and his grief. His pulse was racing in tandem with Lydia’s, as it always was now. Their emotions mirrored each other in perfect form. They were the same in so many ways, those two. Both were proud, intelligent, and deeply caring beneath a brash and hardened exterior.

They cared for each other, and valued the other above themselves. Both were hurt by the words that had been said, and of course they were. They knew each other almost too well. The insecurities, fears, and weaknesses of the other was glaringly obvious to both Lydia and Stiles. Scott hadn’t really realized how well they understood each other until they were screaming the things that crippled the other with almost telepathic accuracy.

_I_ _see where your armor is weak, and I will use it._

The worst part was that Lydia knew that Stiles’s biggest weakness was her, and Stiles knew that Lydia’s biggest weakness was him. And so they drove each other away with self-inflicted wounds, tangling themselves in barbed wire as they lashed out at each other.

Scott had thought that Lydia had won the fight (whatever that meant) when she threw herself into this mission to France, blocking Stiles from accompanying her. Scott felt horrible for being a part of that, but he had seen the deepest driving factor in Lydia’s eyes when they had spoken before. Her words and actions were spiteful and cruel, but her intentions were good. Scott couldn’t condemn her for that.

But then Stiles had started laughing. And the fear rose up in Scott’s chest. He doubted that Stiles had stopped caring, or stopped worrying, but then his best friend spat out his parting line.

_Try not to die over there._

Stiles’s flippancy seemed to twist the verbal blade that he had embedded in Lydia’s chest, and for once, she seemed lost for words entirely. They all watched in silence as Stiles strode quickly for the door, twirling his car key-ring around his pointer finger and catching it in his palm with every rotation. It was out of nervous habit. Scott doubted that Stiles even knew that he was doing it.

When the door banged shut behind Stiles, Scott slowly turned to assess the damage. He had expected tears, or vengeful wrath or something. But  Lydia was blinking slowly, her expression blank and unperturbed and she gradually bobbed her head in a muted nod as if slowly absorbing the extent of the damage wrought on their relationship in the past hour.

“Right. So it’s decided then?” She asked. Her voice didn’t shake, and it didn’t crackle with anger. It wasn’t weak. It was just low, full of purposeful calm. The remainder of the pack and Parrish seemed properly unnerved by this, but only Parrish could find the words to continue.

“I’m fine with that, if it’s not a problem. I can get us out tomorrow night,” Scott blinked away his musings about his best friend to give Parrish a startled look.

“That soon?” He asked. Parrish nodded seriously.

“If I’d been able to get off work a little earlier, I would have come sooner and tried to get us out tonight, but we were a little short staffed at the station, so I had to stay late. We have to leave tomorrow, though. Time is of the essence,” Parrish explained. Scott breathed deeply but nodded in response. Lydia however, turned to Parrish with narrowed eyes.

“You were short staffed today? Why?” Her words were laced with poison, and Scott couldn’t help but worry and wonder why.

“Well, Romero was out sick and Stilinski and Stiles spent like two hours at the shooting range this afternoon so-” Lydia’s expression went from suspiciously interrogative to murderous as a growl ripped from the back of her throat, interrupting the deputy.

“At the shooting range?” She asked through her teeth. Scott swallowed heavily. Stiles must've still not told her about his gun training. Oh boy.

“Is that a problem?” Parrish asked uncomfortably. Lydia seemed to choke back her feral expression as she shook her head.

“LAX then?” She asked. Parrish squinted at her strange conversation patterns, but nodded affirmatively.

“The flight will be going out at 9:00 PM, make sure you’re at the airport at least two hours early. Have your passports and a week’s worth of clothes each. You both get to check a bag so don’t worry about squeezing everything into a carry-on bag,” Parrish rattled off. “I’ll have your boarding passes and everything at the baggage check at 6:45. Here’s my number, call me if anything… changes.” He extended business cards to both Scott and Lydia while issuing Lydia a suspicious look. She narrowed her eyes back at him, otherwise unmoving.

“Tomorrow. We’ll be there,” Scott said in hopes of dismantling the mounting tension. Parrish looked back at him and inclined his head slightly, recognizing the dismissal. He turned on his heel and walked briskly out of the front door that Stiles had rushed out of only minutes before. Derek looked incredibly irritated at the resolution of their decision and as soon as Parrish was gone, he rounded on Scott and Lydia.

“I hope you know what the hell you’re doing. I’m not losing all three of them.” Derek snarled. _Boyd, Erica, Isaac._ His three betas. The words brought an ache to Scott’s heart, but Derek moved on, turning to Malia. “I’ll be in the studio.”

“I’ll come. I’ll bring Lyds too, you can yell at her,” Malia responded immediately. She then eyed Kira and gave her a meaningful look before dragging Lydia towards the front door in Derek’s wake.

“I’ll text you, Scott,” Lydia promised as she stumbled out, stuck in Malia’s unyielding grip. Scott raised a hand in understanding. He then turned to face the one person left in the loft with him: Kira.

“What’s ‘the studio?’” He asked Kira. She raised an eyebrow, a slight irritation lighting up in her eyes.

“I’m not allowed to tell you,” Kira said, casting her eyes downward. “Super secret stuff.” Scott felt the hurt behind Kira’s jab, and frowned worriedly, moving slightly so that his face was in her line of vision.

“What’s wrong? Is it this whole France thing?” He asked, eyebrows drawing together in contrition. Kira looked at him with a steeled expression. Whatever she was feeling was dammed up inside of her, and despite the consequences, Scott wanted to know. He wanted to fix it.

“I... I’ve been thinking a lot.” She started. “And I care about you a lot. And I know that you care about me too. And I feel selfish to be thinking about this stuff and caring so much.” Scott swallowed heavily, feeling his throat narrowing the way it used to when he was asthmatic. He could still breathe, yes, but it was hard and it brought pain to his chest.

“You don’t have to feel bad about bringing something up, Kira. You’re really important to me, and I don’t want to leave here with you feeling like crap.” He said earnestly. He wanted to know. He could fix it if he just understand what needed fixing. Penance was nothing compared to the weight of guilt that was taking up residence in his windpipe. It was always that way.

“I feel guilty, but I feel… I’m frustrated, Scott. I feel like I never get to be yours. I never feel like we can just have a night or an afternoon without someone else needing your help. And if someone needs your help, you’re there, no matter what you were doing or who you were with. I admire that in you as a person, Scott. But as your girlfriend, it hurts. To feel like anyone and everyone who needs your help in any given moment is more of a priority than I am. I really feel like you’re. I really, really care about you Scott, and you’re the kindest, bravest, and smartest guy I know. And I know that everything you do for your friends and for Beacon Hills is important. But it hurts me,” Kira said, her voice thickening and tears welling in her eyes.

Scott closed his eyes momentarily, nodding his head slowly. He understood. What he was doing was important, but it came at a cost to everyone around him. It always did. There was always someone hurt, and he couldn’t protect everyone. But if he had really neglected to protect and care for his girlfriend in the whirlwind of problems that plagued their lives, he had truly failed.

“I’m so sorry. I’m really so sorry, I would bring you with me if I could, if he had even one more ticket to bring,” Scott said, finally opening his eyes to meet the dejected and detached gaze of his girlfriend. She was trying so hard to stifle the pain.

“I know. I know Scott. You’re a good person, and you only have the best intentions,” Kira said, letting her hand rest on the side of his neck, equal parts pain and affection. “But I also know that you couldn’t have resisted going to France if you tried. There’s always going to be someone who needs your help. And… I think I need to think about what that means for me.” Scott closed his eyes nodding.

“I know. I know and I understand. If you’ll just wait until I come back, I want to talk to you about it. I want to make this work, Kira. I want to… I want you to feel like I’m here for you. Because I always will be.” He wished his voice hadn’t come out so quiet and wobbly, but Kira seemed to take it as a sign of sincerity. She chewed on her lip before bobbing her head in assent.

“We’ll talk,” she agreed. Scott let out a shaky exhale.

“That’s all I ask.”

* * *

Malia didn’t relent on her grip on Lydia’s arm even once they were outside the doors of the loft. Instead she kept a steady hand on the banshee as they descended down to the empty apartment the floor below.

Despite Derek’s initial misgivings about converting the place to allow for hand to hand training, Malia had been able to convince him, assuring him that she’d do all the heavy lifting to clear out the living room to install mats and have a sparring space. It wasn’t that hard to do, and Malia knew that it would be worth it to be able to assist Lydia in her training. Malia had been the first person that Lydia approached to ask, and Malia had taken that vote of confidence to heart, making every effort to be a good teacher and a good packmate.

Malia had been worried at first that Lydia wouldn’t want to train in the apartment she’d almost died in. Lydia, however, had assured her that it was alright, when she was dying she didn’t exactly see much of the apartment anyways, so she didn’t care. Lydia’s pulse increased in tempo every time she told that lie, but Malia had learned enough tact to know that if someone lied like that over and over again, the last thing they want is to be confronted about their dishonesty. So she never argued about it.

“What’s going on?” Lydia asked, none too gently. Malia pulled her into the sparring space and threw her some of the workout clothes she kept stocked there.

“Derek has some last minute lessons for you,” Malia said carefully. While Lydia and Stiles had been yelling at each other about this death trap Paris trip, Derek had quietly asked Malia to bring Lydia downstairs when this was all over, because he had a very bad feeling about where this was going to go and he still had some stuff to teach her. Lydia looked a little apprehensive about the prospect, but rounded the corner to the half-bath to change into her workout clothes regardless. Malia was already in comfortable leggings and a sports bra beneath her loose-fitted thermal, so she saw no need to alter her wardrobe at all.

Derek and Lydia emerged around the same time, Lydia in compression shorts and an oversized t-shirt and Derek in a worn out green henley and black sweatpants.

“Shoes off,” Derek instructed her. Lydia sighed before kicking off her training shoes and peeling off her socks. Malia wrinkled her nose in slight confusion. She couldn’t fathom what lesson Derek thought he could teach this girl in one night. It was very clear that the lesson was going to be a physical one.

“What now, boss?” Lydia asked, stepping onto the mats, her tone dripping with sarcasm. Without giving an answer, Derek threw her the dual wooden staves she’d been training with. The second she snatched them out of the air, he hurled towards her at full speed, knocking her flat on her back, but not staying over her to pin her down. Instead, he moved smoothly back across the mat, watching her with cool indifference. Malia watched with a sympathetic grimace as Lydia immediately struggled back up to her feet, holding onto her staves for dear life.

“You’ve got to hit him when he’s at full speed. Sidestep him,” Malia suggested carefully, her eyes darting between the two. Lydia didn’t answer with a snippy retort like she usually would. Her eyes were following Derek as if he was the predator and she the prey. Derek hulked over her, not fully wolfed out, but his teeth were bared and eyes glowing blue. The height differential between them would have been comical if Derek hadn’t looked moderately homicidal. Malia couldn’t blame Lydia for her obvious signs of fear, but she also knew that fear only fueled Derek’s wolf instincts to take her down.

He came at her again and this time, Lydia got a hit in, clubbing him across the jaw before spinning to throw a well-placed kick at his knee. Despite the solid contact and power behind her strikes, Derek didn’t back down or cushion the blows the way he had told Malia to do in their earlier training sessions. Instead, he swept her legs and dropped her to the ground again, pinning her down by the throat with his forearm. When she attempted to hit him with one of the staves, he knocked it away, applying more pressure to her throat, making her gasp. He then pinned her other arm down by the wrist, applying enough pressure to the joint to force her to drop the other stave. Within seconds, Lydia was spluttering and going red, trying to choke out the words to beg him to stop.

“Derek!” Malia yelled, stepping onto the mat, allowing her eyes to glow blue, teeth bared. She couldn’t tell if he was in control. He usually had such a good handle on it, yes, but this… this wasn’t Derek. This was violent, angry and cruel. This was just painful to watch. She had to challenge him in case he’d lost control.

In that moment, Malia realized that Lydia wasn’t just pack anymore. She was a friend, and a good one at that. And Malia would be fucking pissed if her cousin screwed that up.

Fortunately for them all, Derek’s eyes returned to their normal grey and he released his arm from her neck, standing up stiffly and looking down at Lydia without offering her a hand up.

“You’re an idiot, Lydia Martin,” Derek growled at her. “You think you’re invincible and you go running into situations that could get you and everyone else killed. And if this doesn’t go well, if something happens to Isaac because you’re not strong enough… that’s on you.”

Malia watched Lydia register these Derek’s words with wide eyes and haggard breath. When he stepped back from her, Lydia picked up the stave that he had forced her to drop and then stood shakily to walk over and pick up the other one, her shame radiating in the contained training space. She then straightened up with both staves in hand, looking at Derek with determination.

“I understand why you’re worried.” Her voice hardly seemed like her own, low and resonant. “You said you didn’t want to lose all three of your Betas, and now you think I’m not strong enough to save Isaac.” Derek seemed irritated by her words, but continued on nonetheless, approaching her on the mat, his words ruthless.

“You’re not ready. You might be able to incapacitate a human now, but you can’t take on a werewolf. You’re not strong enough now, and you won’t be strong enough when you get to France. And to be honest, you’ll probably never be that strong.” He asserted these words with conviction. A damnation. Malia looked over to where Lydia stood, fists clenched tight on her battle staves, the wine-colored bruises on her knuckles whitening. Her breath had returned to her, but the fight raging within her eyes was suddenly very visible. She wasn’t going to be convinced of anything tonight, Malia could see that much.

“I never expected to be strong enough to take on a werewolf in combat, Derek. It’s never been about the ability to be strong. It’s about my ability to _be an idiot_ and endure.” She twirled the staves in her hands, and smiled at him menacingly. Derek’s eyebrows raised in surprise momentarily, and Malia could have sworn that he was impressed with her resilience, but then he dropped into a fighting stance once again.

Lydia got three hits in before he dropped her this time. As he pinned her down, Derek’s malicious expression returned, but this time there was a tone of desperation in his voice.

“Eventually, you’ll have to stop. There’ll be a point when you won’t be able to get back up,” He insisted, his face only inches from hers. There was thinly veiled concern in his words, and since Malia could see it, she was sure that Lydia saw it too. But to Malia’s surprise, Lydia answered his morbid prediction with a grim, low laugh.

She then successfully jabbed him in the ribs with one of her staves, earning a pained growl from Derek and a cackle of amusement from Malia. He pinned her arms down again and stared at her with disbelief as she smiled faintly up at him.

“Eventually I’ll give up,” She agreed, shrugged as best she could while pinned. “But not yet. Get your nasty wolf breath out of my face and we’ll go again.”

With a grimace, Derek complied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay again. I was concussed just like last year, except this time it's been much harder to get past the first recovery steps. Anyways, I hope you like this chapter, let me know what you think!
> 
> [finndameron](http://finndameron.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


	3. First You Get Hurt, Then You Feel Sorry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia and Scott are going to France. Stiles and Kira are each forced to reflect on their relationships.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been 11 months since I updated this. If you're reading this anyways, I love you.

Lydia stayed at the Hale building well into the night. She let Derek continue to pound her into the mat over and over again her only signs of frustration were a clenched jaw and well hidden exhales of pain. Derek figured out after a while that she was watching his movements, studying his form to pinpoint his weaknesses. If they had been training under different circumstances, he would have made more intentional missteps to encourage her effort. But this wasn’t the time for encouragement and kindness. He was trying to prove a point and she was trying to counter it. So he continued to drop her.

However, as their time on the mat surpassed four hours, he could feel himself getting a little more tired, a little more sloppy. He would have tried harder to conceal it, but he was fairly certain that Lydia was even more disoriented and exhausted than he was. 

He watched as Malia gave her pointers with kindness and support, and wished momentarily that two girls as conniving and vindictive as Malia and Lydia hadn’t found such a solid friendship in each other. He was too often caught defending himself from the two of them together, and it was thoroughly more exhausting than taking on one of them at a time. But he knew how good it was for both of them. They both needed someone.

But then, he took a pass at her, and he  _ missed _ . She spun around and jabbed him in the side of the neck with one of her staves. The blunted end of the stave didn’t wound him, but her point was clear. If she had a knife, a dagger, hell, even a stave sharpened to a point, she would have had him incapacitated. It took her almost five hours of practice and drills and letting a werewolf grind her face into the ground countless times, but she beat him.

Malia, who had been taking a break in the nearest chair, sat up with surprise and delight. Derek had stayed in his crouched position for a moment, blinking hard at the floor and possibly trying to process what was happening. 

She shouldn’t have been able to do that. She shouldn’t have been able to sidestep him. Even when he was tired out, she was too, and he was significantly faster. Even when he was slow, he was faster than her. But she had beat him. Even though it was only one out of hundreds of runs, she proved that somehow, in some way, she could win.

Finally, he pulled himself up onto his feet, turning to Lydia and Malia with tired eyes. Lydia was breathing heavily, the hours of practice suddenly apparent on her face. But beneath that, there was pride. It wasn’t smug, or condescending the way he had expected it to be. It was just joyful.

“That was very good,” Derek said simply, looking down at her. Lydia’s breathing paused before she let out a big sigh, letting her shoulders droop down and her head hang down on her chest for a moment.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice was breathy, but happy. Derek glanced at Malia who had made her way over to Lydia’s side.

“Maybe you want to help her get her things together so I can drive her home for the night.” He suggested. Stiles had driven her over there, and Kira and Scott were long gone. There weren’t really any other options. Lydia was instantly aware of what he was implying, but she didn’t say a word. Malia seemed to understand too, because she went over to the bathroom where Lydia had changed to start pulling together her clothes and purse.

“I think it’s time that you moved up a level,” Derek said quietly to Lydia. She looked at him skeptically, as if she didn’t quite buy the concept of him being complimentary. Or maybe she was just still thinking about Stilinski.

“What do you mean?” She asked slowly.

“I’ve got alloy-infused, pointed wooden staves. They’re a little heavier than the ones you’ve trained with because they’ve got the metal in them. But they hit harder than your training staves, and they shouldn’t have a significantly different texture, so it shouldn’t be hard to adjust.“ 

As he explained this rationale to her, he headed over to the box on the corner of the mats where they kept fingerless boxing gloves, hand wrapping tape, staves, and all other manner of training equipment. He took out the new staves. They were made of darker, more polished wood, and they made Lydia’s current staves look like tinker toys. Lydia took them from his hands gingerly before twirling them in a tight circle, seemingly satisfied with them.

“Will they take them away at customs?” Lydia asked hesitantly. Derek shook his head firmly.

“Just categorize them as sporting equipment and you should be fine. Staves are legitimate martial arts materials, and you’re allowed to bring them with you,” Derek ensured her. Malia emerged from the other room with Lydia’s stuff, and was eyeing the staves with interest.

“So you think she was good enough at being an idiot to get the better sticks?” Malia asked, feigning innocence. Both Lydia and Derek rolled their eyes as they turned to face her, and she grinned. She’d become much more socially acclimated in the past few months, but had realized that she had the ability to be snarky through her traditional avenues of blunt curiosity. It annoyed the shit out of Derek, which was part of the reason she liked it so much.

“Yes, she’s demonstrated about five hundred times tonight that she’s enough of an idiot. But now I know she’s a capable idiot some of the time. And she can endure,” Derek addressed Malia, despite the commendation was intended for Lydia. Both girls seemed impressed by his words, though Lydia was more touched than anything. His vote of confidence meant the world to her.

“I guess I should head home then,” Lydia said carefully. Derek could see the guilt settling back into her system, but she braced against it. _ She’s an idiot, but she endures. _

Things had started to fall into place in her narrative that evening from Derek’s perspective. Her training had undoubtedly been cathartic and empowering for Lydia, but he had never suspected such a weighty ulterior motive to fuel her. She’d been training to protect Isaac. She’d been training so that she’d be ready to help him if the danger ever came to pass. And as much as anything, she’d been training to protect Stilinski. 

Watching him cuss out Lydia in front of the whole pack was one of the most potent moments of genuine pity and vicarious pain Derek had experienced in a long time. She hadn’t deserved that. If Stilinski thought that he would ever have a completely honest relationship with no secrets, he was out of his damn mind. Hell, it was very apparent that Stiles hadn’t been telling Lydia about his firearms training. Secrets were secrets, and he was a hypocrite if he thought he could keep secrets from Lydia in order to keep her safe.

Maybe Stilinski didn’t realize that Lydia’s secret training and research and fear were secrets because she was trying to protect him too. Derek wondered if Stiles really understood the extent of the things Lydia would do- what she  _ did _ do- to protect him.

* * *

Stiles had gone straight home from the loft, speeding all the way there. He’d screeched to a stop in front of his house and gone straight upstairs, not even bothering to kick off his shoes as he tumbled face first into bed. He was pissed. He was embarrassed. He was hurt. He understood that.

What he didn’t understand were the angry, breath-stealing sobs that started to wrack his body. It would have been so much easier to just be mad and be done with it, but he couldn’t help the tide of emotions from enveloping him, reducing him to nothing more than the pain. 

He loved her. He’d always loved her, and he’d always been so vocal about that. He had supported her, he was the person she’d call when she found a body, they were mentally and emotionally tethered for God’s sake. Why didn’t she trust him with that information? Why had she been an absolute idiot and kept it all to herself? He could have helped, they could have gotten through it together.

She was stupid and proud and always had something to prove. 

He hated her. 

_ If only he could hate her. _

If only he hadn’t left her with a flippant, nonchalant approach to death. If only they hadn’t struck each other where it really hurt, he was sure it wouldn’t be such a knife in his chest right now. She’d said she didn’t want to burden him or hurt him. But those words themselves were what hurt. She said she didn’t need his help because she wanted to feel like she could do these things alone. It stung because she shouldn’t ever have to do it alone anymore. That’s what he was there for. And the way she yelled it at him with wide eyes and clenched fists, it felt like she was saying  _ I don’t need you. I don’t want to want you. _

He kicked himself for being so insecure. How many times had she said “I love you” to him? It must have been somewhere in the multitude of hundreds. And he’d never doubted her, not one of those times. When he’d said it back to her, he could have sworn she’d blushed every time, moving in closer to him. 

The ways they loved each other were embedded in every part of their lives.

He always teased her about her choice in food, and she would come back at him with criticisms on his fashion sense.

They’d fallen asleep together spooning in each of their beds. He’d dozed off many times on his living room couch with his head in her lap while her fingers raked gently through his hair, across his scalp. After long nights with the pack, or after a draining, upsetting fugue state, she would fall asleep in the car on the way back home, and he’d avoid the holes in the road so she’d sleep fine.

Her mother had grown to adore him, and he began to understand the complexities of the relationship between the Martin mother and daughter pair much better. The sheriff had always been kind to Lydia, but Stiles was fairly certain that she had wormed her way so deep into his heart that he regarded her with the same affection that he afforded to Scott.

She stole his sweatshirts and t-shirts to bask in the smell of him. He had never seen her wear something as casual as a hoodie to school before, but a couple of weeks into their relationship, he picked her up on a Monday and she was wearing pale pink Nikes, black leggings, and his grey lacrosse sweatshirt on top. She looked so beautiful. She was proud to wear his name on her back, unashamed for the entire school to know that the former queen bee was dating the kid who had pestered her for the previous nine years of her life.

They’d made love in a way that was too passionate to be counterfeit. They’d done it many times. But one time in particular made him truly sure it couldn’t have been an act.

Surrounded in steam and the sweet scents of her shower, they had chosen to  _ not _ shower under the pounding, heated spray of water. Stiles still remembered the angles and curves of her body, the feel of her skin so warm and willing underneath the hungry reach of his hands and his mouth. He had pressed kisses across every inch of the scar Peter had left around her waist, hands gripping her hips while she ran fingers across his scalp, raising goosebumps across his skin despite the heat of the room. 

When he straightened back up, he took to her face, kissing the scar on her cheek over and over until she nudged his head back so she could claim his neck with rough, suckling kisses, sure to leave hickeys within hours. He pushed her back up against the cold tile wall of the shower, eyes hazy and half-lidded. They’d both giggled a little, and he’d sworn indignantly as he struggled to properly lift her up in order to push himself into her. After a few missed attempts, his cock slid between the swollen lips of her labia and she let out a choked gasp. Her legs wrapped around him like a vise, and their mouths met again in a frenzy of heat and lust.

Frankly, it was a miracle they’d made it as long as they did before he slipped and they both fell into the slick, fiberglass basin of the oversized bathtub. They tumbled into one another, crashing to the ground, landing on their sides facing one another. After their breathlessness and initial shock had worn off, they had both began to laugh hysterically about their own idiocy and the bruises they’d soon have in the name of shower sex. 

He pulled her head into his chest, gasping an apology through the laughs that tightened his chest, punctuating his words with kiss planted on the top of her head. At the same time, she was holding her stomach, wheezing with laughter and asking him breathlessly if he was okay. She had no makeup on, her face was beet red, and she was pressed up against him, sweaty and wet and shaking with laughter. He’d never felt so in love with her.

Once their laughter had been reduced to manageable giggles, Lydia had been the one with the common sense, reaching up to turn off the water streaming down on them from above before turning back around to kiss him. He turned them over so that he was on top of her, and for a brief moment, their lips parted and they just looked at each other with hooded eyes and wide smiles. He then leaned back down to kiss her again, and he was received with eager lips and hands clasped around his neck. 

They were less ambitious on their second attempt, staying horizontal within the wide tub, all heavy breathing and keening affirmations. They tried to stay quiet without the sound of the water to cover their voices, unsure if Lydia’s mom was home yet or not. They failed miserably at that attempt. Lydia’s breathy moans rang out within the bathroom as his tongue kneaded against her clit, driving her to a shuddering climax. 

When Stiles entered her again, he found himself equally undisciplined in volume. A groaning, heaving breath rattled out from between his lips as he felt himself rising towards and orgasm. As the relief and ecstasy crashed over him in waves, her name became the only word he could think of, the only sound that he could choke out in a prayer of gratitude and relief.  _ Lydia, Lydia, oh my god, Lydia. _

They’d actually showered together after that. He’d helped wash her hair and she had washed his with casual familiarity, kissing each other softly, tenderly. Then, inevitably, an innocent attempt at washing the other’s backs turned into a war of whipping loofahs at one another under the pretense of “you missed a spot.” 

He didn’t understand how all of this could have been brewing underneath all of that. Pain and fear masquerading as joy. 

He considered the possibility that it wasn’t all a lie. Her laughter had been real. The passion had been real. Her fingers through his hair and the weight of her head on his chest, those casual expressions of love couldn’t just be faked.

Stiles realized he wasn’t crying anymore. Breathing deeply, he scooted up to sit against the wall at the head of his bed, leaning back to think about what was happening.

Before he could make any headway on that topic, he heard a knock at his bedroom door.

“Yeah,” he called out noncommittally, swiping away any evidence of his tears by scrubbing a hand over his face. Scott’s head poked into the room. He moved in through the door cautiously, clearly trying not to upset or aggravate Stiles with his presence.

“Hey,” Scott said carefully. “I thought you might want to talk out the stuff that went down at Derek’s loft.” Stiles checked the time on his phone, and was surprised to see that almost an hour had elapsed since he’d arrive back home.

“Uh yeah, actually, that’d be great,” Stiles said, coughing a little to steel his voice into the right pitch and tone of nonchalance. Scott seemed relieved by this, and sat down on the foot of the bed facing Stiltes.

“First of all, I really don’t want you to be mad about me going with Lydia to France,” Scott started quickly, his expression nervous. Stiles considered this, nodding slowly.

“Yeah, I mean… I think I know that this isn’t really your idea, even though you’re going along with it,” Stiles responded, watching his friend’s expression for a reaction. “But she obviously talked to you about it a little. Did she give you any insight about why she is doing this? Why she did this?” Stiles felt his voice choke up a little with the last question, and he swallowed it back in the silence that followed. Scott sighed, scratching the back of his neck.

“She did kind of talk about it,” Scott admitted. “She didn’t want to put her problems on other people again. She felt like she could protect us all by not telling us about it.”

“Why would she feel like she needs to protect us? She is literally the last person in this pack I’d go to if I needed someone to protect me,” Stiles said, exasperation coloring his tone. Scott raised his eyebrows in tentative humor.

“You don’t think you’re a little biased there, bud?” Scott asked smiling a little. Stiles pressed his lips together to restrain the irritated smile that he wanted to shine at Scott.

“No, I don’t,” Stiles said, over-enunciating. “I think she’s the tiniest person in the pack and she doesn’t have any powers or anything except being a GPS tracker for the dead, so yeah, I think I’ll cower behind you or Derek first.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m just giving you grief,” Scott said, grinning and knocking Stiles’s foot with his own. “I understand that, I really do. But I think she feels obligated to have a big hand in this.”

“I… I guess I get it. I just… I don’t like that she has to do something stupid and dangerous to contribute,” Stiles said, looking down at his hands. Scott nodded sympathetically.

“I know. I think we all know that’s how you feel about this,” Scott said, starting to head into murky waters. “But I think that maybe that message was lost on Lydia, man. You… she was really not okay with it.” Stiles heaved a deep breath through his nose.

“What… did she cry or something?” He asked, trying to keep his voice biting despite his concern.

“No, you know she’s got a lid on that,” Scott said simply. Stiles nodded at this. Of course she did. “She checked out though.” Stiles’s shoulders sagged. 

Since her experience in Eichen house, Lydia had generally bounced back in every possible way. The only real change that Stiles had noticed in her was her tendency to just shrink up within herself and figuratively leave the building when faced with intense negative emotions related to her experience with Allison and Eichen. She wouldn’t emote, she wouldn’t really care, she would just go through the motions of speaking, moving and breathing without really being there at all. Scott had picked up on this sensitivity too, and he was really good about helping her through it. Only Stiles could really break her out of it, though.

“Did you take her home or something?” Stiles asked quietly. “Was she okay?”

“No, she stayed at the Hale building. Malia and Derek wanted to talk to her about something,” Scott explained. Stiles startled at this, looking at Scott with confusion.

“What?”

“She just stayed with them, man, I don’t know why. She seemed okay with it.” Stiles just shook his head in disbelief.

“Whatever. When are you guys going?” Stiles asked, pinching the bridge of his nose as if to stem the stress headache that was forming behind his eyes.

“Tomorrow,” Scott whispered. Stiles’s hand dropped down to his side and his jaw hung loose with shock.

“Tomorrow?!” Stiles squeaked. He thought there would be more time. There had to be more time.

“Less than 24 hours, actually,” Scott said, looking up at Stiles with worry and guilt.

“Fuck,” Stiles hissed. He had to talk to her, needed to clear the air.

“Can you drive the two of us to the airport?” Scott asked, wincing prematurely. Stiles narrowed his eyes at Scott, nostrils flaring.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, you want to talk to her, we need a ride to LAX, I can tune you guys out or something if you two need to talk,” Scott rationalized weakly. Stiles sighed, drawing his knees into his chest and dropping his head into hands, elbows propped up on his knees.

“Fine,” he grumbled.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

* * *

Lydia had cleared the trip with her mom in no time. She sold it as a college trip to other parts of California with her friends. Of course Stiles was coming too. No, nothing was wrong.

His words still stung every time she thought about them.

_ Try not to die _ .

She took a deep breath, stifling the words and instead looking at the contents of her bag one last time. No dresses, no skirts, no heels, no push-up bras. She took a second to appreciate the slow process of weaning herself off of those articles of clothing in the past couple of months. If she hadn’t, this might have been too difficult.

Granted, the boots she brought were still slight wedges and highly attractive, and she had brought some tunic shirts that were practically long enough to be dresses, but they were all more practical. And she had brought only leggings and jeans for bottoms, so she considered it all to be good progress.

She then moved over her bag of travel toiletries to look at the wood-and-alloy staves that Derek had gifted her with. They were enough. But then again… she let her eyes drift over to her desk drawer. As if compelled, she found herself walking over to the drawer, removing the strongbox, and extracting the dagger. It could prove useful if she needed to convince Chris Argent of the truth to what she said. Without any more thought, she moved the wrapped-up knife from the box to her suitcase, and zipped the luggage closed without looking a second time.

She then hefted her carry-on tote bag over one shoulder, rolling her suitcase out behind her with the other hand.

Stiles and Scott were just pulling into her driveway when she walked outside, the blue Jeep idling. Lydia wondered how the sight could feel so drastically different than it had the day before. She’d felt relief and swelling joy when she’d seen him yesterday. Now she felt a drop in her stomach and overwhelming anxiety. She didn’t know how to approach him. She didn’t know how to greet him.

It was in that moment that she realized that this was it was like to really care about someone. If she had fought with Aiden or Jackson the way she’d fought with Stiles the night before, she would have shrugged it off. It might have stung, yes, but God, it wouldn’t have hurt this bad. As she turned around after locking the door behind her, her eyes locked on Stiles’s gaze. He was watching her with a guarded expression, both hands tight on the wheel. Trying to remain impassive, she rolled up to the car where Scott helped her load her suitcase into the trunk.

“Why don’t you sit shotgun?” Scott insisted, his words withering weakly as soon as he saw her expression. Unable to really fight it, she nodded stiffly clenching her jaw as she gave Scott a tight lipped smile.

“Sure,” she said, just a little too agitated to sound fully relaxed. She chanced a look over to Stiles, who was looking anxiously between Lydia and the steering wheel.

“Hey,” he said nervously. 

“Hey,” she replied, keeping her gaze steadily on him. Scott was planted firmly in the middle of the backseat, watching them as if they were a movie. Stiles seemed to see that in his rearview mirror, because without another word, he backed out of her driveway and headed out onto the road. They drove in silence for some time, the quietly buzzing radio offering some merciful grey noise. Scott dozed off within ten minutes and was lightly snoring within fifteen.

With him out of the equation, Lydia glanced back up at Stiles. His thumbs were tapping on the wheel and his entire body exuded restlessness and discomfort. It was somewhat relieving to see Stiles on the defensive again because at least he wouldn’t be yelling at her on the drive. But at the same time, the stain of guilt returned to ebb through her veins. She didn’t want to walk all over him, make him forgive her for lying. She wanted him to understand why she did it, and at least acknowledge the truth to her words, not just sulk and let the conflict lie.

“Scott said-”

“I wanted to just-”

Both of them froze, as they had each started to speak at the exact same time. Neither of them spoke for a moment, in fear of cutting the other off again. 

“Go ahead,” Stiles said quickly.

“No, please, what were you going to say?” Lydia responded. Stiles took a deep breath, drumming his fingers more aggressively on the wheel as they merged onto the highway.

“I just wanted to… apologize for yelling at you last night. What I said was out of line,” Stiles said, almost tripping over his words. The blended, cycling manner of emotions on his face was too murky for Lydia to truly pick out what he was feeling, but she decided to go the safe route anyways.

“It’s alright, I know you were just mad, and I understand that too. I should have told you about all of this stuff instead of hiding it,” Lydia said, looking down at her interlaced hands in her lap. “It’s not that I didn’t trust you or that I thought you wouldn’t be able to handle it. I just… I needed to know that I could handle it.” Stiles watched the road with a sort of detached expression.

“I know. Scott said you were trying to protect me or something.” He was irritated again, that much was very clear. Lydia steadied herself before speaking.

“I am. I mean, there aren’t a lot of ways that I can really protect you and help you the way that you’ve helped me, so I just thought-”

“Wait.” Stiles cut her off, eyes narrowing, darting briefly from the road to her face. “Do you seriously think that I need protecting from this? From you?”

“No, not like that, Stiles. I know you can handle yourself and me, but I don’t want to need you to protect me,” Lydia said.

“Well that’s kind of part of the job description, Lydia! I care about you a lot and I’m going to protect you from stuff, and I don’t mind doing it!”

“It’s not supposed to be a job!” Lydia said, her voice rising slightly in volume.

“Lydia! Jesus Christ, yes it is! I’m your boyfriend! If I don’t take care of you, who will?”

“Me! I’ll protect myself!” Lydia said, voice high and disbelieving. “Or literally anyone in the pack who can heal themselves on a whim and who weren’t killing themselves to save me three months ago!”

“Even if everyone else is protecting you, I’m going to feel responsible if you go out and get yourself hurt! You already almost died because of me, why can’t you just let me try to make up for that? You can’t go running into danger out of spite.” The silence that hung between them was so heavy that it was hard to breathe.

“That wasn’t your fault,” Lydia finally said. “And it won’t be your fault if something happens to me again. It’ll my fault. My choices, my actions, my consequences. Tell me that you can understand why I need to feel like I have control over my life again.” 

Her words finished out barely above a whisper. Stiles was sitting absolutely still, and based on Scott’s breathing patterns, he was awake in the backseat, but pretending to sleep for their sake.

“Is this all about what happened with the tether thing again? The Allison thing?” Stiles asked finally. Lydia took a calming breath through her nose, trying to keep the anxiety and panic suppressed down deep in her chest. Those emotions threatened to overwhelm her every time the Allison incident was mentioned. Even worse, they were pulling off the highway, only minutes away from the airport. They had to wrap up this conversation,  _ now _ .

“Yes. Every-” her voice cut out momentarily as she felt her anxiety tighten around her neck like a garrote. “We can’t really cover this all right now, but when I think back to that time, all I can remember is how helpless I felt. I hated it. It was like I was just a spectator to all the terrible things that were happening to me. And I had to watch the way it hurt you.”

She expected Stiles to cut in, but his face had softened slightly, and he glanced over at her, waiting for her to continue.

“I just… getting past that made me feel like I was back in control. And now that I have control, I don’t want my problems to ever hurt you like that again. I need to do this. I need to prove to myself that I can do this and have this problem without hurting anyone else,” Lydia said, her voice thick from the emotion and the mounting anxiety. “I need to know that I deserve you. I didn’t hide this because I didn’t trust you or didn’t care about you. I hid it because I love you, Stiles, I want to protect you. And I would rather you hate me and stay safe than get hurt or die because of me. Because you love me.” 

Stiles remained quiet for a moment, his fidgeting stopped and his eyes glassy. They were heading up the ramp to the International Departures drop off area, and Scott had to stop pretending to be asleep as he looked out the window for their airline. He pointed it out to Stiles, who swerved into the curb to secure them a spot. 

Stiles hopped out of the driver’s seat without saying a word to Lydia, and she felt the sting of tears filling her eyes. Wiping them back, she opened her door and slid out onto the pavement. Turning towards the trunk, she ran directly into the immoveable form of Stiles Stilinski. She looked up at him, and saw his face unabashedly colored with desperation.

“Don’t go. Please don’t go, Lydia. We’ll figure this out, but you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to prove anything to me, or the rest of the pack. I know you can do this, but please don’t.” He was pleading with her, and her heart ached at the sound.

“I’m not trying to prove anything to any of you,” she said, allowing her voice to break as her face crumbled. “I don’t want to do this, but I have to, Stiles. I have to prove this to myself. I need to feel strong again.” Stiles’s face was blotchy, but he was trying valiantly to swallow back his emotions.

“Lydia, we need to go,” Scott said apologetically. Stiles looked back at him where he was standing with their bags and nodded his understanding briefly. He turned back to Lydia and gripped her shoulders to keep her from moving past him.

“Please don’t be an idiot and pick a fight or something,” he said, forcing a watery smile. “I want to be able to yell at you about this whole thing and what an idiot you are when you get back.”

_ It’s about my ability to be an idiot and endure. _

Lydia wondered if Stiles would ever let her out of his sight again if he’d heard her talking like that with Derek and Malia last night. Regardless, she nodded back, biting her lower lip. As if that was an invitation, Stiles leaned down and kissed her. 

Lydia dropped her tote bag and leaned deeper into his kiss. She could feel his hands, so warm and strong holding either side of her waist. Those hands were a desperate petition all on their own, and it was so hard to resist. 

She could go back to Beacon Hills with him and spend the night in his bed, fighting and fucking and spooning with those hands and those lips and that wonderfully, solid and beautiful body. She could fall asleep to the sound of his breathing and the brush of his lips on the nape of her neck and his arms wrapped around her.

She wanted all of that more than anything. But she knew that this was the only chance she had to feel powerful again. She needed to have agency and control over her own life.

She needed to return to him with the fullest ability to love him without guilt or fear or regret.

So she pulled away from their kiss.

“I can’t wait,” She whispered. He closed his eyes long and hard, but when he opened them, he was able to smile at her. When she moved to pull away entirely, he wrapped his arms fully around her, squeezing her tightly. Without hesitation, she reciprocated, burying her face into his shoulder. 

“Guys, we have to go,” Scott repeated, this time with a little less worry and a little more authority. Lydia looked up at Stiles, her hands still draped around his neck despite the exaggerated height difference without her heels.

Stiles seemed to notice the three extra inches of height between them, his eyes glancing down at her feet suspiciously before pulling her hands off of his neck, examining the rusty, maroon bruises on her knuckles. She’d forgotten to cover the bruises with makeup this time. Lydia could see the cogs of distrust turning around in his head, piecing the clues together. Her practical leggings and his loose lacrosse hoodie, her black, athletic Nike shoes. The wear and tear on her hands. The tiredness. He realized that she didn’t intend to stay safely in the shadows.

His dark, amber eyes darted up to meet her’s. His gaze was piercing, filled with questions and accusations, but he didn’t say anything. Instead he cupped her face between his hands and kissed her twice on her right cheek, slowly, on the scar she carried there. Then he let her go. Lydia walked slowly past him, every step making the weight of her heart grow heavier.

“Take care of her, Scottie,” Stiles called out from behind her. Lydia looked up at Scott and then back at Stiles. He looked so small standing there alone in front of the Jeep, his eyes bright, shoulders slouched inwards, and hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans.

“I will, buddy,” Scott assured him with a solemn, serious nod. The alpha then wrapped a comforting arm around Lydia’s shoulders to usher her into the air conditioning of LAX. She looked back over her shoulder as they passed in through the sliding doors of the airport, but the Jeep was already pulling away from the curb.

“He’s gonna be alright, Lyds,” Scott said gently. 

“I know,” Lydia said unsteadily, wiping away the remnants of tears as she nodded. She spotted Parrish through the crowd, at the baggage check for their airline and he waved at them. Scott squeezed her against his side in a warming hug before dropping his arm from her shoulders, his dark eyes tracing the worried lines of her face.

“You’re going to be alright too, you know.”

This time, Lydia didn’t answer.

* * *

Kira stared blankly at the phone that sat on her bedside table. She’d been watching it since she had sent Scott his last message. When she’d dropped Scott off at home the night before, she’d been removed, trying to detach from the emotions pooling up inside of her. She told him that she worried about him and she cared about him and that it hurt her to see him doing all this to himself.

He’d responded that he’d be fine, he promised.

He missed the whole point.

She knew by now that Scott was not a stupid kid. His grades were barely passing, but that was because of his inability to complete all of the trivial busywork their teachers assigned for homework. Kira remembered looking over in shock to see that he got a 96% on a grammar and vocabulary test in English when the class average had been a 74%. Kira herself had gotten an 82%. He ended up with a 90% in statistics the previous semester without turning in any of the homework. The homework was worth 10% of their grade.

Scott was a lot of things, but he was not academically challenged. In all likelihood, his intellect rivalled Stiles’s, but he was so quiet and humble that no one ever seemed to know. Things like that bothered Kira. People constantly underestimated the complex facets of his abilities and character, and she seemed to notice things that had even escaped Stiles for years. Scott was a gifted, giving, talented person.

But when it came to relationships, Kira had learned that the kid could be dense. She had learned to be more direct, more explicit, or at least, she had made steps in that direction. It was hard to do, but Scott encouraged her openness and received it with kindness and serious attentiveness. Even still, she couldn’t spell everything out for him.

So now here she was, sulking in her bedroom alone while her boyfriend flew overseas with a friend and a stranger to save a person that Kira had only known for a month. A person that none of them had seen in nearly six months. She scoffed quietly to herself despite the ache in her chest.

Since the ordeal with Lydia and Allison, Kira hadn’t doubted that Scott loved her. He constantly emphasized his appreciation of her character and her beauty through kind words and desperate, passionate lust. 

They never had a lot of time to themselves, so the pair had learned to pack an hour’s worth of fraternization into about 15-20 minutes, and Scott’s everyday expressions of devotion would manifest themselves in a potent physical ritual that curled her toes and left her breathless on the bed. It wasn’t hard to return the favor, leaving the alpha werewolf stunned and momentarily speechless as his eyes fluttered shut with the ache of release. 

He never pressured her to return the favor despite her willingness. At first Kira thought it was kind and considerate, allowing her to create her own boundaries, but over time, she came to realize that it wasn’t so simple. 

His desire to please others was never accompanied by the expectation of compensation. It was selfless, but stupid at the same time. This knowledge had since lodged like a parasite in Kira’s head, and it had been steadily growing, heightening her sensitivity to the motives behind Scott’s actions.

And slowly but surely, she felt the weight of her heart grow heavier as she saw the things he did out of his need to help. She realized that what had begun as a caring, considerate act of kindness had become so routine to Scott, that it wasn’t just a single kindness done out of significant sympathy or specific empathy.

When Scott helped someone in pain, he didn’t see it as an exceptional act of kindness. He saw it as an obligation.

And suddenly, it became very clear why he flinched and cried in his sleep. The anxiety and guilt that seemed to hover over him like a dark cloud finally had an origin. She began to understand why he thanked people profusely for their help, but was uncomfortable when they did the same to him. She began to understand why supporting, loving, and attending to his girlfriend fell somewhere on the same plane as helping Malia out of some temporary trouble  _ and _ saving Isaac from an impending danger.

Everyone needed help, and Scott needed to be the one to help them. Regardless of the scale of the problem, he saw them all as his to take on. He prioritized by scale, then by his personal stake in the matter. Kira’s distress fell somewhere beneath Isaac’s situation for Scott, and so he felt like he had to go instead of letting Derek go in his place. He could have let someone else take care of the problem. Kira reminded herself, that he really couldn’t help it. It stung anyways.

She sat up in her bed, rubbing her tired eyes with the heels of her hands. Her parents were out at the movies for the evening with some neighbors, and the house was completely silent without them. She hadn’t read them in on Isaac’s situation yet despite knowing that she’d have to eventually. For a little while, she didn’t want to go to her parents to solve the problem. She wanted someone else’s support.

So she picked up her phone and scrolled through the contacts. Scott and Lydia were out. Derek and Malia had already let her know that Derek would be giving her some wolfy training that night, so they were out too. Kira let her thumb hover over the last name left in her restricted circle of confidants.

She knew that if she called him, things would be said. Enlightening insight on Scott and Lydia would both come to light. It might get difficult. She might get upset.

She knew that they both needed it though. They needed to make sense of what was happening with their masochistic significant others.

So she tapped her thumb on the screen and held her phone to her ear. He picked up on the second ring.

“Hey Kira, what’s up?” Kira didn’t miss the deflated tone in his voice, but she steeled herself against her anxiety and pressed onwards.

“Hey Stiles. I think we could both benefit from having someone to hang out with tonight, what with Lydia and Scott gone. I have Mortal Kombat and tequila.” Her offer was initially met by silence, then a slight laugh.

“That sounds pretty good right now. I’ll head over.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope people are still interested in reading this even though I took forever to post it. If you're not, I understand. Reviews are received with absolute delight. 
> 
> Tumblr is [finndameron](http://finndameron.tumblr.com/).

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome back to the story! I hope you liked the first installment! Please let me know what you think, it means so much to me when people take the time to leave a comment. I'll be updating this one roughly every couple of weeks, so keep an eye out. Thank you for reading!
> 
> Tumblr is [finndameron](http://finndameron.tumblr.com).
> 
> Chapter title taken from "Weight of Living Pt. 1" by Bastille.


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